In his old age, Cao Cao assesses his former military tactics, love, and relationship with his son.

Ximen Debao is an innkeeper without big ambitions. In order to attract business, he instructs his younger brother Tu Hao and his friends to pose as robbers and rob passers-by, and at critical moments he assists them by posing as a saviour and crime-fighter, and then guides the customers into the shop. The good times don't last long, as Tak Po's scam is exposed by a mysterious monk who finds it difficult to continue. In the meantime, the assassin of Lingzhou, He Snap, kills the imperial envoy in order to seize the treasure map hidden in the inn, and frames Debao for the crime. Overnight, Debao becomes a wanted criminal and his son, Yau Fei, dies. In order to take revenge, Debao begins to train with a monk.

A poor farmer who loves a woman he is forbidden to associate with becomes a hardened mercenary, and is hired by a local warlord as a professional assassin. Years later, he runs into his old love and begins to question his violent past

Wang is a gloomy, cunning and avaricious noodle shop owner in a desert town in China. His neglected, sharp-tongued wife is involved in a secret affair with Li, one of Wang’s employees. A timid man, Li reluctantly keeps the gun his lover has bought to kill her husband. But Wang is watching their every move. He bribes patrol officer Zhang to murder the illicit couple. It seems like a perfect plan: the affair will come to a cruel, bloody but satisfying end or so he thinks. The equally wicked Zhang has an agenda of his own. As the plot twists, more blood will flow, and ever greater violence will erupt.

During the late Eastern Han Dynasty, power, intrigue and military ambition collide as rulers, generals, and court officials vie for dominance.